Community paramedics, who help ease the burden on emergency departments by caring for people at home, are continuing their mission in Chatham-Kent.
Community paramedics, who help ease the burden on emergency departments by caring for people at home, are continuing their mission in Chatham-Kent.
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Medavie, which operates emergency medical services in the municipality, offered a glimpse of the program and its wide-ranging services this week.
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In place locally since 2015, community paramedicine has evolved and now offers even more health-care partnerships and tools.
“The main focus is to provide healing in the home for people, as opposed to sending them to the hospital,” said mobile integrated health manager Pete Morassutti. “People actually heal better when they’re in the home.
“That’s where this program kind of seeded itself and then just ballooned, with all our community partners,” he added.
Services offered include in-house lab tests, oxygen, blood pressure readings and electrocardiograms. And there’s a pilot project in the works to respond to falls through remote sensors.
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Chatham-Kent EMS general manager Jeff Brooks said front-line staff are always learning.
“As the program has grown, we’ve identified procedures and skill sets that are needed to manage some of these people in the home,” he said. “The amount of service. . . community paramedics can bring to the people at home now has greatly expanded.”
There are seven community paramedics in Chatham-Kent.
Partnerships with Bayshore Home Health, Victorian Order of Nurses, Life Labs, and police and fire personnel, have allowed for a holistic approach to a patient’s well-being.
“Literally, it takes a village,” Morassutti said. “We want to be a proactive village. It’s time to take care of our seniors, like they took care of us.”
You generally need a physician or home care referral to take part in the program, but EMS will work with those who don’t have a family doctor.
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In the past, there could be a disconnect between the various agencies, Brooks said, but now with a comprehensive care plan, they can see what is and isn’t working.
“I think this where we get a good bang for our health-care dollar,” he said.
There is always the potential to expand, he added, citing palliative care and homeless health outreach as examples.
Chatham-Kent EMS held a soft launch last fall for its mobile care bus, with a formal event expected in the near future.
Paramedics also help with a mobile health trailer, set up outside Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, which is geared to seasonal cold and flu patients, but also deals with other health issues.
“We’ve seen over 1,300 patients in that trailer since we opened it in November,” Morassutti said. “That has decreased length of stay time by 93 per cent, for those minor ailments.”
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